Dr. Wong on the Current Landscape of NSCLC

Kwok-Kin Wong, MD, PhD, Anne Murnick Cogan and David H. Cogan Professor of Oncology, Department of Medicine, and director of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, discusses the current landscape of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

NSCLC is a very heterogeneous disease that can be divided by oncogenic-driven lung cancer and nononcogenic-driven lung cancer, explains Wong. For patients with oncogene-driven lung cancer, there have been several FDA approvals for patients with ALK, EGFR, and ROS1 mutations as well as encouraging single-agent activity for patients with RET, MET, NTRK, and HER2 mutations.

For patients without a targetable mutation, immunotherapy has made a significant impact on care. With these agents, physicians are observing durable responses of up to 7 years in select patients––even cures in some cases; unfortunately, this impact has only been seen in a small subset of patients. Efforts are ongoing to design clinical trials that will extend duration of response to the majority of patients with lung cancer whose benefits only measure about 12 to 18 months with immunotherapy.

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Kwok-Kin Wong, MD, PhD, Anne Murnick Cogan and David H. Cogan Professor of Oncology, Department of Medicine, and director of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, discusses the current landscape of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

NSCLC is a very heterogeneous disease that can be divided by oncogenic-driven lung cancer and nononcogenic-driven lung cancer, explains Wong. For patients with oncogene-driven lung cancer, there have been several FDA approvals for patients with ALK, EGFR, and ROS1 mutations as well as encouraging single-agent activity for patients with RET, MET, NTRK, and HER2 mutations.

For patients without a targetable mutation, immunotherapy has made a significant impact on care. With these agents, physicians are observing durable responses of up to 7 years in select patients––even cures in some cases; unfortunately, this impact has only been seen in a small subset of patients. Efforts are ongoing to design clinical trials that will extend duration of response to the majority of patients with lung cancer whose benefits only measure about 12 to 18 months with immunotherapy.